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 Do-nothing, go-nowhere weekends in New York
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| Looknig north along West End Avenue from 79th Street. Friday, 2:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
March 1, 2010. A partly sunny, partly cloudy weekend in New York; snow mostly melted but wet underfoot.
I’ve become addicted to do-nothing, go-nowhere weekends in New York. It’s not that I do “nothing,” I just don’t make any commitments as much as possible (without being entirely anti-social). I did go across town on Saturday to Zabar's.
I like going to the Upper West Side which, versus the Upper East Side, is more of a melting pot (what today would be called a fondue pot) of New Yorkers. The far East 79th is very residential. The far West 79th is both residential and commercial. And Zabar's is almost a mecca. |
| Friday afternoon at Zabar's luncheonette which is on the corner of West 80th and Broadway, next door to the store. |
You feel like you’re in the thick of Noo Yawk, and because it’s Saturday, it’s even a little laid-back and relaxed. The sidewalks are full of shoppers, residents, kids, activists and panhandlers. The latter are usually well-established in the sense that they have their spots and they’ve been there for years.
Up until recently there was an old guy, a man of color who would stand next to a stairpost by the church on the corner and as you walked by him he’d sorta slur: “spare ay-change…?” which you knew meant “spare any change,” except it sounded like he’d repeated the question so many thousands of times he’d grown tired of it but was just going through the motions because he had to.
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| The man at the Zabar's luncheonette door (occasionally) is a friendly fellow who could make good use of whatever you can spare -- food or change. March, 2009. |
| Some of the guys on hard times aren't even up to asking. March, 2009. |
Another guy sits on a small crate nearby, holding a cardboard sign that says he doesn’t have work and needs food and God bless you. He’s held down that spot for years now. Then there’s another guy who often opens the door for you at Zabar’s corner luncheonette. He doesn’t ask for anything. I usually give him a buck when I leave. I once thought that was a pretty good gift but I don’t know anymore.
I tend to give money to people who ask me for it on the street. It’s not like they’re asking you to part with money so that they can become rich. If I don’t part with some spare change, I tend to feel I should have (many times I don’t have it to spare, of course). Although the spare-ay-change and cardboard poster guys seem almost like a joke to me. The guy at the luncheonette not-so-much. He looks under the weather and under everything else also.
So, inside the luncheonette which was mobbed as always, I got myself a number 5 panini (Cuban sandwich – ham, cheese, pickles) and read the FT Weekend’s lunch interview with the best-selling author Jonathan Safron Foer in which he discussed and defined at some length how he is a vegetarian, or rather a vegan.
I’m sitting there reading it in agreement, sharing his outrages, etc., when I suddenly realize that I’m eating (and enjoying) a piece of ham! I had to remind myself that “ham” is not a vegetable. These things happen. On my way out, I bought a walnut brownie. $1.98. Same brownie on the East Side: $3.75. These are the small pleasures of the weekend. |
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Back at my apartment building when I went to dispose of my old newspapers I noticed that a neighbor had got rid of several dozen World of Interior’s dating all the way back to the mid-90s, all in like-new condition. Since I never bought the magazine, I requisitioned them. I like WoI for its historical pieces. I’m also amused by the scrubbed unpainted wainscoting and cabinet doors and doorjams, as well as overwhelmed at the copious houses and apartments chock full of sundry collections. And red. A lot of red in a lot of rooms. Red for rich. I found a very good piece on the last residence of Kaiser Wilhelm (in Doorn, the Netherlands). A weirdo, to put it kindly or compassionately. Otherwise a scourge.
World of Interior stories. I was telling my friend Schulenberg about my collection of magazines because I knew he likes the magazine. He had a “personal” World of Interiors story:
Years ago when I was living in New York, I'd found an arched three foot square piece of discarded architecture on a sidewalk in front of a theater downtown. I was on my way with a friend to see a show there when I saw it and I sent her on into the theater and took the beautiful arched piece home in a cab! It looked like a part of an altar or something that might've housed the figure of a saint or something similar.
I covered the top with milk glass and used it as a wonderfully picturesque coffee table!
Years later when I’d taken up residence again mainly in L.A., I sublet the place to a friend. When I decided to move everything out West, I went back to the apartment to organize the move, and the table was no longer there. My tenant who was not “legally” living there, told me that when there was a "problem" in the apartment that needed a repair, he'd had to barter stuff to get it done as he couldn't complain to the super!
A few years later, around 2000 or 2001 looking through WoI, I see an article about a guy in Maine who had a house full of savaged pieces and and stuff. And there in a full page photo of the room, I see "My Table" with a wooden top! Right there prominently in the foreground!
Since his telephone number was in the article, I called him and he told me he'd gotten it at a country auction. I told him its provenance, all the way back to the sidewalk in front of a theater in the Village in New York City!
By late Saturday evening I’d had my fill of interior decorator magazines, and that I wish I had better bookshelves. I then de-accessioned the collection of WoI’s and I think the sanitation truck removed them from the neighborhood last night.
On today’s Washington Social Diary Carol Joynt writes about Washington women, specifically Sally Quinn and Desiree Rogers who have been in the news in the past few days – Quinn for leaving her Washington Post column and Rogers for leaving her White House post. Carol has some choice descriptions of the situation women in Washington are in, and argues that those without power are on no uncertain terms, shown little respect or even dissed.
In this same Diary, is a video of an interview that she did with Sally Quinn, Ben Bradlee and their son Quinn; a riveting interview with a family – the real reality show.
It was a beautiful blizzard that New York had last week. We had almost three days of snow with half that time in accumulation. JH got the last day of it after which the tempuratures rose and the melting began. |
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